


crawling out of ashes

by someawkwardprose



Series: from fertile soil [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Other, Pre-Poly, Queerplatonic Relationships, Series 03 Fix-It: Children of Earth (Torchwood)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28864821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someawkwardprose/pseuds/someawkwardprose
Summary: The war might be over, but the hardest battle is just beginning.Or, Gwen Cooper and the men she loves.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper & Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Ianto Jones & Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Series: from fertile soil [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116740
Comments: 17
Kudos: 45





	crawling out of ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [engagemythrusters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemythrusters/gifts).



> well. this isn't what I expected to spend my tuesday night writing. blame [louise](https://iianto-jones.tumblr.com/) who wanted more post coe polycule. it's not quite there yet (sorry) but we are Certainly taking steps. but you got 2.5k out of me in four hours so be grateful you impatient bastard 
> 
> as ever, shout out to the gorgeous and wonderful [nik](https://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/) who did a super quick beta turnaround to make sure I could publish this tonight, I really don't deserve you <3 
> 
> slightly darker than _salt the earth_ , immediate aftermath of CoE, and some characters have had to do Bad Things (but no children were harmed!)

Jack was holding Ianto’s hand.

That was the first thing Gwen noticed. She wasn’t sure Jack had moved at all in the time she’d been away, and the fist around her heart - present from the moment she had heard about Thames House - clenched tighter. 

She’d seen them in more compromising positions through the past two years. Once, she’d walked in on Ianto bending Jack over his own desk, and after that, well, embarrassment had simply stopped being a factor in her reactions. But for all that Jack was touchy, they were rarely openly affectionate, because Ianto was  _ weird _ . It was something that upset Jack sometimes, she knew, but he respected it and had asked Gwen to do the same. 

This was something else.

Maybe it was the intimacy of it, the sweeping strokes of Jack’s thumb over Ianto’s knuckles. The way that, every so often, he’d bring Ianto’s hand up to press a kiss over those same knuckles. Maybe it was the way she caught Jack blinking back tears every so often and the expression of sheer  _ devastation _ that he couldn’t shake.

The ventilator obscured most of Ianto’s face, but he looked pale and wan under all the machinery. The steady rise and fall of his chest was reassuring, though, and she reminded herself that even that hadn’t been a sure thing, a few days ago. The rhythmic beeps of the heart monitor had become the best lullaby Gwen could have ever asked for. 

“I brought sandwiches,” she said, catching Jack’s attention. 

He blinked up at her for a few seconds, as if he couldn’t understand. His eyes were rimmed red and ringed with dark circles - dark enough to look like the bruises that never stayed on him. She wondered if he’d slept at all since Thursday, the last time Ianto had flatlined. 

She’d only managed a couple of restless hours on the waiting room couch, Rhys’ jacket laid over her. 

“Rhys is getting some coffee from the vending machine,” she continued, placing the paper bag on the small table that seemed to be ubiquitous to every hospital bed. “Maybe the smell will wake him up, just so he has a chance to complain.” 

Jack gave her a watery smile but otherwise didn’t respond, turning back to Ianto. She sighed. 

“My mum’s gave us some money, until our accounts are open again. I’ve booked a hotel. You’re going there tonight with me; Rhys is going to take a shift with him.” 

That, Jack did respond to. “No. I’m not leaving him.” He sounded firm, though his voice was rough.

Gwen refused to bend on this one, though. “No, you are not. You are coming with me.” 

Jack turned to glare at her, and she jutted her chin out. “What the hell would Ianto say, if he woke up and saw that you haven’t even bloody showered?” 

“I am  _ not _ leaving,” Jack growled, and his eyes turned flinty. Dangerous. Sometimes, she looked at this man and saw the most vulnerable human she had ever met. Sometimes she looked at him and saw all that barely restrained rage, all those centuries of helpless horror turned into a weapon; a predator wearing the skin of a man. But he was still Jack. Her friend, her boss, her monster. Gwen would never be afraid of him. 

“You are, if I have to shoot you and drag your body out of here. We need to sleep, Jack - and Ianto needs us to be here for him. He’s going to need us at our best.” 

He met her eyes for a few moments longer, but she refused to waver. You weren’t meant to blink, if you were in a staring contest with a wild animal, and Jack was very much a cornered wolf right now. Had been since he’d been dragged away from the morgue, since they’d pulled him off of Ianto’s body, shouting and pleading. 

She’d never asked what he’d done, how Ianto had survived when no one else had. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. 

Jack broke first, and she knew she’d won. 

“An hour, Jack, and then we’re going.” He clenched his jaw but gave her a tight nod. Gwen relaxed a tiny bit and put her hand on his shoulder. She congratulated herself when he leaned into her touch. 

They stayed like that, a frozen tableau of Jack watching Ianto and Gwen watching him, and the heartbeat monitor kept on beating. 

* * *

_ “I’m sorry,” the man in the white coat - a doctor but not  _ **_their_ ** _ doctor, not Owen, not someone he trusted beyond measure - said. “There’s nothing more we can do. We can at least make him comfortable-”  _

_ Jack heard the words as if through water, his knees going weak. It hadn’t been enough, he could never do enough, he wasn’t enough -  _

_ “No,” Gwen said, pushing in front of him. She got very close to the doctor, stabbing a finger into his chest. “No.”  _

_ “Ma’am,” he began, a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. Jack watched with a distant sort of fascination.  _

_ “Don’t  _ **_ma’am,_ ** _ me,” she snarled. “My best friend is in there. You will save him.”  _

_ “I’m sorry, ma-”  _

_ She pulled herself to her full height, all righteous fury and desperation. “Do you have children, sir?”  _

_ The doctor swallowed, nodded. She grinned, something savage and beautiful.  _

_ “His name is Ianto Jones; he is twenty-six years old. He is Torchwood - I assume you know who we are by now,” she said, a vengeful angel, and Jack had never loved her more. “He has protected you, silently, for years. He nearly  _ **_died_ ** _ , trying to save your children.  _

_ “You are going to go back in there, and you are going to save him,” she told him, an implacable force of nature. “Because he just saved the world, and you owe him.”  _

* * *

To say they slept would be an overstatement; they curled around each other on the twin mattress - the best she could afford - while they sorted everything out, Jack laying his head on her chest, listening to her heartbeat, one hand over her stomach. She ran her fingers through his hair and stared at the ceiling, wishing they could just move a mattress into Ianto’s room, and have all four of their little family together. 

Rhys would call, if anything happened. He would watch and make sure the doctors didn’t try anymore of that giving-up nonsense.  _ Not that they would _ , he’d said.  _ They’ve had the fear of God put into them. You’ve seen to that.  _

She missed Rhys. They’d barely had a chance to talk since everything, catching five minutes where they could, kipping on the uncomfortable hospital chairs together when they had to. They hadn’t even had a chance to talk about their baby, yet. 

Their baby. Christ. 

Unconsciously, her hand found its way to her belly, fingers tangling with Jack’s. What kind of world was she bringing their baby into? A world full of danger and death? One where they were hunted by their own government when they tried to save the world? 

Jack shifted a little, leaning down to press a kiss to her stomach through the lattice of their hands. “We’ll look after them,” he promised, his voice low and sincere. 

“What if we can’t, Jack?” Her voice cracked on his name. 

“We will,” he swore, tilting his head to look at her. His eyes gleamed in the grey dimness of the room as the false dawn filtered in through the window. “We have to.” 

Gwen had held it together from the moment she was told that Ianto was alive (or at least no longer dead, a distinction that meant  _ something _ to Jack). She had held her head up high while UNIT kept her in a tiny concrete cell and told her to think carefully about keeping secrets. She’d grinned in the face of the ambassador of the monsters that threatened her people, and she hadn’t flinched when she’d helped Jack pull the trigger and genocide an entire race in orbit around the planet she protected. She’d held firm against every professional opinion about Ianto’s life expectancy. 

In this tiny dark room, with Jack’s arms around her, she let herself break. 

Jack held her through it all. 

* * *

Rhys had known, getting into this marriage, that he would be sharing his wife. With Torchwood, or Jack Harkness (the two were synonymous in his head), he had accepted that there would always be a part of Gwen’s heart that didn’t belong to him. After Toshiko and Owen, he had realised he would be sharing her with Ianto Jones, and somehow that was less of a problem than sharing her with Jack. 

After the stars disappeared, after the world nearly ended, he had stumbled towards the Plass and their secret base and saw one of those tin-can monsters in the entrance. He realised then just how close he had come to losing the love of his life and began to realise what he was really sharing her with. He was sharing her with the world, and he knew she would gladly lay her life down to save it. 

He might not have had all of Gwen’s heart, but that was okay; she had a big one, and it could hold millions. Sharing her with these two men, her anchors - he could do that, because they would always make sure she was coming home to him. 

He had come to accept them in his own way. Jack, he’d realised, didn’t want to take Gwen from him; he wanted to share her, wanted to offer her all the support Rhys couldn’t, loved her with a fierce kind of protectiveness that Rhys knew was reflected in his own heart. They’d come to an agreement over a late night, watching her heal from some alien weapon - there had been words and bruises exchanged - but they’d come to the understanding that they both wanted the same thing: for Gwen to be happy. And Ianto was a good lad: young, no matter how old he pretended he was, but sharp and sly and a good Welshman, who watched Jack and Gwen with the same careful, loving eyes. 

It was hitting him now, how close he had come to losing them - all three of them. He had no doubt if Ianto hadn’t...they would have lost Jack, maybe for good. And Gwen would be here, with him, but there would be some part of her missing, never to return. That terrified him, because he was coming to realise that he might have lost part of himself too. 

“You’re causing a right fuss, mate,” Rhys told the still figure on the bed. 

Ianto, of course, could not answer, but Rhys liked to think he could hear him anyway. 

“You were damned lucky,” he said, fussing with the monitor a little. He wished he could be home, wrapped around Gwen in their own bed, but he wouldn’t leave Ianto alone. Not until everything was sorted properly. 

The past two weeks had been a special sort of Hell, one he never wanted to experience again. When he’d heard about Thames House...he’d expected the worst, had prepared himself, really. When everything had been sorted - when the skies over every major city in the entire world had lit up in a hail of fire and ash and vengeance, when the children were safe and Planet Earth had made it abundantly clear that they were not negotiating - and he’d found himself in this hospital room, he’d begun to believe everything would be alright. 

And then came the doctors, the nurses, and every hour a new set of grave diagnoses - long-term lung damage, hypoxia, brain damage; three times Ianto’s heart had stopped, and Rhys’ had stopped right with it. 

Ianto would get better. He had to get better. 

Because Rhys was realising, slowly, that he might have been sharing Gwen with these men, but he was also sharing himself. 

There were four people in Rhys’ marriage, and he was surprisingly okay with that. He just needed Ianto to get better, so he could let him know.

* * *

_“I saved him,” Jack said grimly, and Gwen did not ask._ _She simply nodded and let herself hope._

_ “Let’s end this, once and forever.” Jack’s eyes were filled with something English didn’t have words for, and it scared her. But Gwen agreed, even though she knew the cost would be high.  _

_ “He asked me not to forget him,” he whispered into his hair, and his voice was bleak. “He told me he loved me and asked me not to forget him, and I-” Jack’s voice broke, and he heaved a sob. “I couldn’t even say it back.”  _

_ Gwen would have to live with the choices she had made over the past week. Her only comfort was that Jack was going to have to live with his.  _

* * *

“Good morning, pet,” Gwen began, brushing the hair out of Ianto’s face. It was getting long - longer than he liked to wear it, at least - and flopped into his eyes a little. It made him look younger. Not that he needed any help with that. 

Ianto was silent and still, and she swallowed. She plucked his hand from the sheets, and his skin was cool to the touch. She caught it between both of hers and tried to warm it up. 

“Jack’s going to talk to the - oh, some official or other, I wasn’t really listening. It’s to make sure we’re given full pardons and access to our bank accounts. Compensation money too, I think, although pretty sure we’re already going to sue the arses off of Whitehall anyway. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone. He’s barely left your side to eat or sleep. You should stop doing this to the poor man.” Again, there was no response, and Gwen swallowed back a sob. She had done all of her crying last night, and Ianto didn’t need it here.

“Rhys is finally off to bed, now. He stayed with you all night. No change. But that’s a good thing, right? No news is good news. You haven’t had an episode or anything.” 

Still nothing. She bit her lip and squeezed his hand a little tighter. 

“I have to go for a scan tomorrow, just a check up on the baby, and I’m fucking terrified that something I’ve done will have hurt them. We weren’t exactly taking care of ourselves, and I keep thinking about everything I’ve done wrong. And I keep thinking,  _ if Ianto was awake, he’d give me that Look, the one that says ‘you’re being an idiot’ _ . People have been having babies for millenia.  _ Stop thinking you’re cursed by the universe,  _ you’d say.  _ You’re not that special, Cooper. _ ” 

“Anytime you want to wake up, that would be grand.” Her eyes prickled, and she blinked back tears. “I miss you.” 

The heart monitor continued its steady beeping, and Ianto’s chest rose and fell, like clockwork. And then, very softly - so gentle she could almost think she had imagined it - Ianto squeezed her hand. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed!!


End file.
